Author, columnist, broadcaster, funny bird.

Just like Mummy said…

When I’m not writing twaffly blogs or rearranging my condiments drawer or investigating my cleavage or having arguments with TV producers or opening and closing my fridge or picking Lego firemen off the kitchen floor or flossing my teeth or seeing if I can burp ‘The Archbishop Of Canterbury’ or trying to get my pants to be more comfortable or any of the other eleventy billion things I do on a daily basis to avoid writing books…. I write books.

These are mostly all about what it’s like to be a parent, which is generally enough to put anyone to sleep and probably accounts for the fact that all the people who have read my books are sleeping.
The ones who aren’t asleep are feigning sleep, very well, so that nobody asks them if they’d like to purchase my next book.

I have very clever readers.

Partly also, my books are about children, without whom it is very hard to be a parent.

In fact, children are what make being a parent worth it. They are the l’Oreal of the human race.

All the rest is just haemorrhaging cash, cooking pasta, buying pasta, and cleaning pasta off the floor/walls/plates/items of clothing, folding extreeeeeemely small mismatched socks, and saying “Would you please just bloody well go to sleep so that I can have some sex before I die of old age??? Yes I KNOW Daddy’s inJapan. And your point IS???”

Yes, it is our children who make the whole business of parenting not just bearable, but more happy and fun than you can have in a Happy Fun Factory on two-for-one Fun and Happiness Day. (Notice I said ‘our’ children, not ‘other people’s children’. Other people’s children are generally OK, sometimes even very nice, but rarely Fanfuckingtastic.
They are the Tesco Value of the human race. Nice, but not the real deal.)

And it’s this very Fun-and happy-ness of my children that explains why I so often fall back on them to supply me with the best material for my blogs. Although of course the whole Lazy Arse thing mentioned in my previous blog may have a hand in it.

(Incidentally, if you have your hand in a lazy arse then you need to go and wash it straight away. And if you didn’t read my previous blog then WHAT ARE YOU DOING???? Go and read it as soon as you finished reading this one and washing your hands. Thank you.)

Anyway, children, while occasionally being so annoying they make you want to look skyward and call upon the Greatest Wrath of all the Very Wrath-filled Gods and ask them to please STRIKE THEM DOWN with Lego Lightning and do very Unpleasant Things To Them until they stop arguing over whose SODDING turn it is on the SODDING computer and why can’t they go and read a BOOK, and preferably not one about SODDING Boy Wizards, or climb a tree or fart the National Anthem or build a rocket out of the crumbs of their mother’s crumbled spirit or, or….ANYTHING else – for example – are also just the loveliest things that have ever walked this earth.

In all respects other that this last one, children are also a mirror unto us. What we show them, they show back. Until they’re teenagers of course, at which time what we show them they spit back in our faces, sighing,
“God Mum, that’s just so STUPID. I mean….GOD. As IF. Jeez. That’s well not sik. I’m going OUT.”

But until this joyful time they pretty much absorb a lot of what we tell them, and throw it right back at us.

And that’s when you get moments like this little note, written by my son to his two older sisters to let them know where we were, and what the rules were while we were gone.

I’d love to say I’ve never said any of these things….but I think we both know that’d be a load of wrinkly bollocks.
Mind you, I don’t recall saying anything about killing sefs. So technically it’s not QUITE what I say every single time I go out.

Liz – I’m a new blogger and I’m so glad I found your site, because I absolutely love your writing style! My kids are only one and three and drive me completely mental (on a good day), but are also capable of melting my heart (occasionally!). I thought maybe, it would get easier as they get older, but from reading your blog, I’m getting the impression that it won’t. Oh well! I’m really keen to read your books now. If I’m honest, I haven’t managed to read a book without falling asleep, since around May 2008, but I’m thinking your books could change this! Thanks for making me laugh! xx

Hurray, hurrah! So gad you’ve found my scribblings, and gladder still that you enjoyed them 🙂
My books are in the same kind of vein, but I don’t love them quite as much as I would like, due to the, erm, restrictions of the publishing process…..
I have re-written the whole of my 1st book, taken out all the Yummy Mummy crap and made it MUCH sharper…..but they won’t reprint it as it’s ‘too expensive’. So I’m stuck with an old version I don’t like.
Ah well – just glad it’s out there at all!
Good luck with your two Little People, and keep readin’!
Liz.

Hi Liz, I got in touch when I first started my blog almost 2 years ago, I have just revisited after finding you on Mumsnet – why has it taken me so long!!? I loved your books (they put me to sleep because they helped me put my babies to sleep) and now I have a 2 and a 3 year old and I am working, writing, starting a business, trying to be decent wife and struggling pretty much every day. I need a dose of your humour to get me through it!

Hi Holly – how lovely to hear from you again!
Sounds like you are busy busy busy. Hope the business takes off and you’re loving the writing. The writing is what keeps me sane. Love, love love it.
The daily struggle of a mother with young children is VERY familiar to me, and millions of others. Thank goodness for Mumsnet, twitter, friends etc to get us through it! I DOES get easier…..but mostly it get differently difficult. The problems just become less about nappies and crying children than boyfriends, body image issues, spots, bras, mobile phones and homework!!
Fun, fun, fun….
Come back and visit again 🙂 Liz.

Hello there, I don’t know if you read your comments or not, but if you do, here’s one more for you!

I am neither British nor a parent. In fact, I am American but I live in Romania. We have a meeting once a month for English speakers and trade books and I read voraciously, so I also read your book (Survival Guide to a Family) when it came my way.

Just wanted to say thanks for a nice read, and you taught me lots of words I never knew, such as “naff” and “A&E” and others like that. So… your hard work didn’t go to waste, I swear 🙂